In the Public Eye

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 148, 25 June 1938, Page 21

In the Public Eye

Prince Louis Ferdinand of the House of Hohenzollern and the Grand Duchess Kira of the House of Romanoff were married in civil ceremony in Cecilienhof Castle, Potsdam, recently.

The marriage clerk, who ordinarily performs the civil service in Potsdam City Hall, went to the castle. Former Crown Prince Wilhelm, the bridegroom's father, and the Grand Duke Cyril, father of the bride and pretender to the lost throne of old Russia, were the only witnesses.

The marriage clerk had donned a Prince Albert coat and high hat. The former Crown Prince wore the picturesque Death's Head Hussar uniform and the Grand Duke formal civilian dress with his decorations.

Guests meanwhile assembled in the great hall of the castle for the Greek Orthodox service. There were sixtyone men and women of royal blood besides the bridal pair and their parents, twenty-six counts and countesses, noblemen and noble ladies, and eleven commoners. -Each received early in the morning a twelve-page programme, telling exactly what to do, where .to sit, and when to kneel. There were diagrams of the various tables in the three dining-rooms, with 'the name of each guest in proper place for the wedding breahfast. An altar had been erected in a spacious bay window of the great hall of. the castle. A Russian chorus of sixteen voices sang from an alcove to the left of the altar. The bride wore a gown of richly embroidered silver brocade, nearly one hundred years old, a court dress of her grandmother, the Duchess of Coburg, only daughter l of Emperor Alexander 11. She entered the great hall on the arm of the bridegroom, carrying a bouquet of white carnations and orchids, and wearing a diadem of Russian crown jewels. For this, ceremony Louis Ferdinand wore the'uniform of an air force lieutenant.- ; - ' .'-•'.-. j The wedding guests noted that the Crown Prince was the first to step across a band before the. altar, meaning, according to the old belief, that he would be the head of the matrimonial establishment. When the second ceremony was anded the Rev! Bruno Doehring, who performed a third ceremony at Doom, spoke a word of blessing. Then everyone filed by to offer congratulations. In keeping with the private family and friendship character of the wedding, no reigning houses were invited axcept that represented by Queen Alexandrine of Denmark, a sister of former Crown Princess Cecilia, the bridegroom's mother. Queen Alexandrine attended with the Crown Prince and Princess of Denmark. :- There were no high members of the German Government present, and the former German Kaiser, Wilhelm, likewise was absent from the wedding of his grandson. A Lutheran ceremony wag performed later in the former Kaiser's home at Doom, The Netherlands. Among the guests were former King Ferdinand of Bulgaria, brothers and sisters of the Crown Prince and their families, and brothers and sisters of the bridegroom. The Archduke and Archduchess Anton of Austria also were guests, along with the Duke and Duchess of Coburg. Mr. Watt Disney. ' Walt Disney, Mickey Mouse's papa, to whom the Government has appealed to use New Zealand animals, is like the old woman who lived in a shoe. He has so many children he doesn't know what to do. While other film studios are cutting out jobs and slackening production, Mr. Disney's plant employs more than 700 workers —a record number. The "help wanted" sign hangs on the door. Mickey, who made his first hit ten years ago, is still the No. 1 star. Mr. Disney says so. But Mickey was almost crowded out as the Disney family grew. It is strictly on his creator's orders that he is making a comeback this year. As Mr. Disney sees it, Donald Duck and other upstarts have been getting the best jokes. They were a fresh stimulus and unintentionally the animators slighted Mickey. Donald is an established star, almost as well known as the little rodent whom the Japanese call Miki Kuchi, the Spanish Miguel Raton, the Germans Michael Maus, and the French Michel Souris. Pluto and Goofy, the dogs, have won popularity. Wilbur, the grasshopper, Gus, the goose, and Donald's three duckling nephews, Huey, Dewey, and Looey, are on the up-swing. The three little pigs, after an absence of five years, are coming back —with the big bad wolf. This time they will use a lie detector to foil the wolf, who by now has three little wolves. Eighteen short cartoons a year is the studio schedule. All are in Technicolor. They cost £ 10,000 each and earn about £3000 profit., Mickey still has the same voice, Walt Disney's, but his ears are modified, his hands and face smaller. Minnie Mouse has a different voice. The girl who spoke for her retired last winter. Some day Mr. Disney hopes to put Mickey in a full-length picture like "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," but he is far down on the waiting list. "Snow White," finished only last December after three years of work, is regarded by Mr. Disney as an experiment which taught *him how to make a better picture next time. It is expected to earn about £1,400,000 One long feature a year is planned. For 1938 it is "Bambi," the story of a deer. Next year it may be "Pinocchio." Another Disney ambition is to animate cartoons to -fine music. He got Leopold Stokowski to record "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" recently but the story has yet to be drawn, I

It has been the duty of Mr. Hirosi Saito, Japanese Ambassador of Washington, who has just been appointed to London, to let his Foreign Secretary know the currents of official and popular thought in the United States. But since the thought at present is so. definitely anti-Tokio, there has been little opportunity for the exercise of the Ambassador's good-will function with any prospect of real results., The Ambassador found it politic for him and his aides to be as pleasant as possible and hope for the best.

So, to make the best of a bad situation, the Far Eastern diplomats spent much time on the gplf course. Each year Saito gave a gold cup to the best golfer among the members of his staff and the Japanese business men living in Washington.

Frequently, after dinner, the attaches and secretaries, who liked to hear the .Ambassador tell of his own and other men's experiences in diplomacy, gathered in the living-room of the Embassy to talk. Soon someone would say, "How about a game of poker?" and the play began.

Hirosi Saito's standing as a diplomat is high, apd the fact that he made no effort to force the Japanese expansionist argument down America's throat was probably the best testimony to his excellence. He was also the lightest Ambassador in Washington—ninetyeight pounds. He is fifty years old.

Saito's greatest assets are his frankness and his informality. He leaves little doubt where he stands. How valuable is the virtue of frankness in diplomacy he proved at, The Hague six years ago. In 1931, Japan was incurring the moral wrath of most of the world by its Manchurian campaign. At such a time, the Tokio Foreign Office undertook to negotiate an arbitration treaty with the Netherlands. Progress was slow. Then Japan ordered Saito from London, where he was senior counsellor of the Embassy, to The Hague. The Oriental told the Dutch plainly what Japan wanted. He put, aside insistence on petty points, and the treaty was quickly signed. Saito considers it his greatest triumph. The attaches at the Washington Embassy speak of it with awe, because thV circumstances were most unpropitious for treaty manoeuvring by Japan. Mr. Wolfgang Hirth. Recently Mr. Wolfgang Hirth, the famous German sailplane pilot and designer, landed at the Cape Town Airport in ' a squat little biplane with wings rakishly swept back—a Bucker "Jungmann"—which had taken him by easy stages from Stuttgart to the Union by way of Asia Minor and East Africa. Mr. Hirth, who has an artificial leg, explained in an interview that after he lost one leg in a motor-cycle accident thirteen years ago he had a long struggle to get his powerplane licences back. , "Nobody stopped me from flying sailplanes after I left the hospital, so I went on," he said. "Then in 1927 I regained my "A" Licence, with permission to fly aeroplanes for a year, but without passengers. "The following year I wanted to take part in a flying contest where 1 had to carry a passenger, and managed to get permission for that event only." As Mr. Hirth won the contest the authorities relented, and in due course allowed him to requalify for a noncommercial ."B" licence. "Authorities frequently make exceptions," added Mr. Hirth. "The late Wiley Post, the one-eyed American airman, is a case in point, and an eye is more precious to a pilot thani a leg. In a modern aeroplane a pilot! hardly needs his legs."

Mr. Hirth said that after he returned from Japan he felt he wanted to see Africa, which he had never visited. The chance came when he was given the opportunity of delivering a Bucker machine to the purchaser in Johannesburg.

On the way Mr. Hirth visited gliding centres in Turkey and Egypt. In Rhodesia he went out of his way to visit Umtali, where a club was started some time ago. In Johannesburg he delivered the aeroplane, which he later borrowed for a tour of the Union. "I help the glider people wherever I am," he said, "and show the films I have brought with me." Questioned about his plans for the return trip, Mr. Hirth said that he did not know whether he would return home by steamer or airliner. But before leaving he intended making a trip by car from Johannesburg to Windhoek. With Robert Kronfeld, Mr. Hirth was the first pilot ever to receive, the coveted "Silver 'C'" soaring licence. Apart from being a gliding ace he is probably the world's foremost sailplane designer. He has written a number of books on soaring, and one has been translated into English. The Earl of Clarendon. The Earl of Clarendon, the new Lord Chamberlain, who starts work on July 1, recently gave the Press some of his views on his new job, particularly on the., censoring of plays. He said he would not be an unduly censorious censor, although no doubt he would have to do some cutting at times. "One has to move with the times in these matters," he said. "There are plays on the stage today which would never have been allowed in my young days." Lord Clarendon said that he had always been interested in the theatre. "I like good historical plays," he said, "and am fond of a good thriller —oh, very fond of that sort of thing. But revues I find rather boring." Lord Clarendon is a great admirer of Bernard Shaw. He says that the Lord Chamberlan is rather a family job. His uncle, Lord Lathom, was Lord Chamberlain to Queen Victoria. Lord Clarendon's i father held the post for many years in the reigns of Victoria and Edward i VII.